


children of the martyr race, whether free or fettered

by deathrae



Series: moonsinger chronicles [4]
Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, GET IT, but I got to thinking "okay but what if", but this really stands alone, cuz it's a werewolf AU, general holiday fluff, is pretty much Famous Last Words for me, spoilers for "when the wolves are silent" up to like chapter 24 technically, there's a lot of irony in posting channukah-related content on christmas, which as we know from "wolves" in general
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 06:31:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13141044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: Nicole isn't aScrooge, thank you. Well. Not really. And not without good reason, anyway.Set in the "when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls" universe.(Title from a classic Channukah song "Ma'oz Tsur." Not to be confused with the Christian hymn of the same translated title: "Rock of Ages.")





	children of the martyr race, whether free or fettered

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so technically on Christmas Eve 2016, they'd already failed to recover Dolls, meaning that Nicole and Waverly would be in poor straits and Waverly would be in the very early days of Mictian's possession. But shhhfshhhsh it's our little secret okay, go with it...

For a couple days after the chaotic events of the Winter Solstice, Purgatory actually sort of forgot about Christmas. But in the face of aggressive holiday spirit and good cheer, even the fear and anxiety that had plagued the town couldn’t last.

Nicole, as a general rule, didn’t have anything _against_ the holiday season. She liked the weather well enough, or as much as anyone _likes_ treacherous ice and snow during one of the most congested travel seasons of the year; she thought the lights were pretty, if easy to overdo; she thought the general tendency toward compassion and generosity was a good thing, even if it was unfortunate that it was so much harder to come by the rest of the year ‘round.

What she did get frustrated with, though, was the incessant questions and nosiness that the holidays seemed to inspire. Small towns were one thing, but ever since she’d gotten to university, the questions had followed her so much more closely than when she’d been young. As if the universe itself was laughing at the irony of it all.

“Hey Nicole! What’s this I heard about you volunteerin’ to work Christmas Eve?”

“Haught! Got any big holiday plans?”

“Okay, fess up. What are the dumbest Haught family Christmas traditions?”

The answers were relatively uncomplicated. At least, on the surface level.

“I don’t mind, and it’s better that someone who wants it more gets it off.”

“Nope, gonna curl up with a book and my cat.”

“Don’t really have any. Dad wasn’t a big holiday person.”

And there was that thinly veiled truth on which she thrived. No, her father wasn’t a big holiday person. Or at least, he hadn’t been, until he suddenly _was_. Until he started tracking solstices and equinoxes more closely than Christmas and Easter. Until he took to twisting perfectly peaceful, ordinary pagan celebrations and slapping a layer of blood and darkness over them.

Well. Then again, that part _was_ a pretty Christian thing to do. But not so much the part where he started celebrating the sabbath with a blood sacrifice instead of, say, going to church, like any other ordinary person.

 _Those_ memories were not exactly fit for Hallmark cards and Lifetime movies. In point of fact, between the stress, the inane busybody chatter, and that ugly fight with Shae on the 22nd, she was fully prepared to be a proper Scrooge about this year’s Christmas.

That is, until Waverly Earp wandered in through the front door of the station in the middle of the afternoon, wearing tight black jeans that showed off her hips and long, lean legs, a beautiful red knit sweater, and a jauntily perched Santa hat sitting on her head as naturally as if it were there every day.

“Hey sweetie,” Waverly said, while Nicole was trying to remember how to restart her heart. She was tugging on the pull string, but the motor wasn’t catching. Waverly sat on the edge of her desk beside her, smiling that beaming smile, and crossed one leg over the other. She smelled like cinnamon and peppermint and sugar. Baking, maybe? “You okay?”

“Whu,” Nicole started, and then made a face and rubbed a hand over her mouth. “I mean uh. Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.”

Waverly grinned, and winked. “What, dog got your tongue?”

“Hush,” Nicole said, but the smile on her face wasn’t fooling anyone. “What brings you by? It’s late.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, tapping one foot to a beat Nicole didn’t hear. “I came to scope out the BBD offices. And wanted to see what your plans for tomorrow were. With it being Christmas Eve and all.”

“Oh,” Nicole said, and even she could hear how crestfallen she sounded.

Waverly’s eyebrows jumped up, and she tilted her head to the side. The puffball on the end of her hat bobbed. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Nicole added, maybe a little hastily. “Yeah, sorry. I just.” She sighed. “I put myself on the schedule ages ago. When we got together... I’m sorry, baby, I didn’t even think about it.”

“You signed up to work Christmas Eve?” Waverly said, startled. There was a note of disappointment to it, but then recognition touched her face, and her expression softened, and something like admiration crept into her voice next. “You figured that you’re the rookie, you don’t have family here... so you’d let one of the locals have it off instead, huh.”

Nicole smiled a little. “Yeah, partially.”

There must have been something giving her away in her voice or on her face, because Waverly pulled over a chair and settled next to her. Sarah left the reception desk to head into Records, and Waverly watched her until she’d left, then turned to Nicole. “Okay. So, what’s the other part?”

Nicole listened for footsteps or shuffling or the sounds of breathing, but it was quiet, other than the distant hum of active electronics. She could smell ink and paper and dust and Nedley’s coffee mug and the faint aftertaste of snickerdoodle on Waverly’s skin, but otherwise, there was nothing. Satisfied the room was empty, she set aside the piece of paper she’d been looking at. It was a notice about the relative toxicity of poinsettias for household pets, to be posted around town. Or at least, it would be, once she got done wondering how many poinsettia leaves it would take to poison the wolf and actually _printed out_ the damn things. She took a deep breath. Waverly set one hand on her knee, reassuring and warm through the khakis.

“My um. My family is pretty messed up,” she said. “I don’t talk to my parents anymore. Ever, I mean.”

“Oh,” Waverly said. “Is it the...” She gestured between them, indicating _connection_ or maybe _relationship_ with a flick of her hand. To think that a thing so vast, so important, could be summed up in such a momentary thing. To think that the screaming match when she’d brought her second-ever girlfriend home could be distilled down to such a simple gesture.

“Partly,” Nicole conceded, taking a chance on the partial truth.

The rest? The blood, the pentacles, the ritual knives, salt barriers as the only things protecting them from the unspeakable, the binder full of demonic names her father had on hand for summoning? That she could share later. Maybe at a slightly less _festive_ time of year.

“There’s more to it than just that, but. Yeah, that’s the lion’s share of it.”

Waverly let out a breath and took Nicole’s hand in hers. “I’m sorry, baby. I can’t even imagine.” She chewed on her lip, then said, “I can tone down the Christmas cheer if that would help.”

There’s her Waverly. Always putting others first.

Nicole breathed out a laugh and squeezed her fingers. “No, Waves. No, that’s fine. We didn’t really celebrate Christmas anyway, even before. It’s not, like, _traumatic_ or anything.” She grinned. “I don’t get war flashbacks from Christmas carols playing over store radios. Promise.”

“That’s good,” Waverly said, grinning again. “We Earps don’t have a lot in the way of family traditions, but Christmas was pretty important. Especially to Gus.”

Nicole chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds about right. Your Aunt Gus strikes me as someone who’d have a good time decorating trees and putting up lights.”

“She does,” Waverly said, laughing. “Though she insists on it being tasteful. Says all the ‘ _commercialism bullshit gets on her last damn nerve_.’”

“I admit, I never really got that part of it.”

“Really?” Waverly said. “You guys really _didn’t_ celebrate it, huh.”

“Nah. My mom was—is, I mean. Jewish,” Nicole said, with a somewhat half-hearted shrug of her shoulder. “Though Dad didn’t really like it. He kinda put an end to it when I was young, but...”

“Whoa whoa hold up,” Waverly said, a slightly confused grin curling her mouth. “You’re _Jewish?_ How am I only hearing about this now?” She formed her mouth around the words _jewish werewolf_. “That’s not something you hear every day.”

Nicole felt her face heating a little, and scratched at the back of her neck where she could feel her skin turning pink. “Well, I dunno, it doesn’t really come up often. Like I said, my dad didn’t really. I mean. He didn’t want people to know, I guess?”

“Why, was your neighborhood really...” She waved a hand in a vague circle, attempting to indicate _white supremacist_ or _neo-nazi_ or _generically anti-Semitic_ without putting words to it.

“Nah. But I think his parents didn’t like him marrying a Jew. They’re kinda...”

“Evangelical?”

“No, Episcopalian, I think,” she said, almost with a straight face. For a moment Waverly squinted at her, and Nicole’s attempt to keep from smiling ultimately failed. “Yes, I know the difference.”

“Okay,” Waverly said. She was frowning, but that didn’t last long either, breaking apart into a wide smile. “Did you like it?”

“Like what?”

“Y’know, traditions. The Hannukah stuff.”

Nicole struggled not to smile. “The Hannukah... _stuff_.”

Waverly’s face went pink, even all the way up her ears. “All right, listen, so I don’t know much about it.”

“That’s okay, Waves, really. And. Yeah, I guess,” Nicole said. “I think the last time we celebrated it I was like. Ten. My mom made latkes and jelly doughnuts that year.” She smiled, though it was a little more fragile than she’d have liked. She remembered that year. But she remembered the next year too. That summer was when her dad started having friends from work over for long chats in the basement.

When her mother swapped out her Star of David necklace for a pentacle.

“Okay,” Waverly said, with a force that startled Nicole out of her own thoughts. She got up from her chair and pushed it back into place.

“Okay?” Nicole echoed.

“Yeah,” Waverly said, and leaned down to kiss Nicole on the forehead. “You’re working late tonight, right?”

“Yeah, transition shift, in advance of going on nights tomorrow,” Nicole said, blinking up at Waverly. “Why?”

“If it’s okay with you, I’ll pack a bag and crash at your place tonight? Feed CJ for you, put some food in the fridge for you, y’know.”

“Okay,” Nicole said, feeling very much like she’d missed something. “Sure, yeah. That would be really nice.”

 

When she got home, at nearly four in the morning, her house seemed perfectly in order. And while she would not readily admit it, she took a little extra time snooping around the kitchen and the living room, trying to figure out what her evidently scheming girlfriend had done. She found nothing out of the ordinary, though, and leaned against her kitchen counter to eat the meal Waverly had left in the fridge for her. It was a club sandwich, simple enough, though when she brought it to her mouth, she noted, based on the smell, that it was made with turkey bacon, instead of normal bacon. She almost laughed. Good old Waverly. Later she would have to explain that even when they _had_ been observing the holidays, they’d never really followed the kosher rules.

Meal eaten, cat accounted for, and nightly routine finished, she headed for her bedroom, and found it occupied by one girlfriend, sleeping poorly. Nicole paused for a moment in the doorway and let her vision tint gold until the shadows receded. Waverly was restless, it seemed, shifting now and then, her feet shuffling under the blankets, her fingers twitching, curling and uncurling. Her brow furrowed occasionally, and she made faint, sad little sounds that made Nicole think of a puppy in the throes of a nightmare.

Waverly was, in general, soft, and fragile, and beautiful. But in sleep, all these qualities magnified tenfold. When awake, she hid all her troubles with a smile and a wink and a bubbly good cheer that had everything to do with how she was seen, and very little to do with how she actually felt. But in sleep, the façade fell away. She was just Waverly: a kind young woman who had seen too much, suffered too much, and now was far too old for her 22-year-old body. She didn’t bear lines in her face, not yet, but the shadow of the creases of care and fear and strain lingered anyway, a sneak peek of what she might look like as an older woman. Provided, of course, that the curse—the Earps’ curse, though really Nicole’s curse was a similar risk—did not kill her before she could get to _be_ an older woman.

Nicole let the wolf’s sight fade, padded across the thick rug, and slid into bed beside Waverly as smoothly as she could. But Earps slept light, for preservation’s sake if nothing else, and Waverly stirred, hovering in that exhausted space between fitful, useless sleep and proper wakefulness.

“Nicole?”

“Yeah,” she said, leaning over to kiss Waverly’s shoulder where the strap of her tank top ended. “Just me.”

“Good,” she said, and when Nicole slid up behind her, pressing her body along Waverly’s and tucking a knee between Waverly’s knees, she settled, letting out a breath that sounded somehow hours overdue. As if only now, with Nicole at her back, could she really rest.

“Go back to sleep,” Nicole said, letting her voice drop into a low, warm rumble.

“Mmhm,” Waverly said, already drifting.

“Cutie,” Nicole said, like an accusation, but there was a soft laugh tripping in her chest.

“No you,” Waverly mumbled. When Nicole wrapped an arm around her waist and hid a laugh in the curve of her bare shoulder, Waverly smiled, but just like that, she was back to sleep, her breath evening out to a slow, easy thing.

Nicole smiled, and settled in behind her. She stopped fidgeting, finally at peace, and Nicole let herself fall asleep to the sound of Waverly breathing and the steady beat of her heart.

 

She woke up briefly when Waverly got up, and, though still only half-awake, put in earplugs when Waverly handed them to her. She’d put up blackout curtains after her first stint on the night shift, but the earplugs had been Waverly’s suggestion. Especially once Waverly started staying over and puttering around during the day while Nicole slept. It wasn’t as effective as it would be for most people, but it did help to deaden all but the loudest and closest sounds, which, for a werewolf trying to sleep during the day, was pretty much essential.

When she did wake up, at around 3 in the afternoon, it was to a very particular scent wafting up the stairs.

Potatoes and onions. Strawberry jelly and sugar. And a hell of a lot of frying oil.

She wandered out of the room, electing not to put on much more than the boxers she’d slept in and a robe that had been only technically tied, yawning and scratching idly at her neck. She allowed herself a glance into the mirror in the bathroom as she passed by and ran her hands through her hair to get it to sit mostly in order and less like a squirrel had tried to bury nuts in it. As she got down to the ground floor, she perked up a little more at the scent of frying food, a feeling that quickly morphed into alarm when she heard Waverly yelp.

“Ouch! Shit!”

Nicole hopped over her couch and skidded to a stop in the doorframe into her kitchen, and blinked. Her kitchen, it seemed, had been taken over by a holiday spirit, or possibly a small team of them. Her box grater was sitting on the counter, submerged in the debris of what appeared to be a small army of discarded bits of potato, and nearby a couple mixing bowls, dusted with flour and sugar where batter had attempted escape, were sitting in a haphazard stack. But first and foremost in her mind was Waverly, who was standing over the stove, shaking out her right hand and sucking at the web between thumb and forefinger.

“You okay?”

“Jesus!” Waverly said, half-turning and setting her hand to her chest. “Nicole! Don’t do that.”

“Sorry,” Nicole said, and grinned. She sniffed at the air, following her nose to peer over Waverly’s shoulder. Two frying pans were on the stove, each half-full of oil and bubbling away. In one was a handful of small hash-brown-looking patties, and in the other, what could only _possibly_ be three handmade jelly doughnuts, a bit misshapen, a bit uneven maybe, but perfectly imperfect, and rapidly turning golden-brown where they sat in the oil, giving off an absolutely divine scent of frying dough.

“You’re...” Nicole tried to make more words come, but her throat was suddenly and rather unkindly too tight to speak.

“I-I spent most of last night and this morning researching,” Waverly admitted, wringing her hands in the apron she’d borrowed from Nicole’s cabinet. “So it turns out, um, this year’s actually sort of special, because the first night of Hannukah and Christmas Eve are the same night. It only happens once every _38 years_ , which, wow.” Waverly looked up at Nicole, who was still staring at the pans, and hastily looked down, moving to flip the latkes. “A-and I just thought, after we talked yesterday, I mean, I get that you’ve got some really bad memories of it, and, well it sounds like your dad is kind of a dick, but, I thought maybe it would be nice to make some new memories.” She switched utensils and flipped the doughnuts over, letting the unfried side sit in the hot oil. “And, I mean, holidays are a big deal to– I mean I don’t want to impose it on you, a-and I don’t want to drag you into Christmas insanity if it’s not your thing, especially with the way Wynonna can be, y’know, but, I thought...”

“Waverly.”

She bit her lip, looking up. “Yeah?”

Nicole cupped her hands around Waverly’s face, and kissed her.

“Oh,” she said.

“This is amazing,” Nicole said, looking at the stove again. “How’d you even know how to...”

“Never underestimate my research abilities,” Waverly said, with implacable gravitas.

“Yes ma’am,” Nicole said. “Can I help?”

“Um, you can set up the menorah? I tried to look it up but I got some conflicting information. Does it matter if you put the first candle on the right or the left?”

“It does, yeah,” Nicole said, bewildered. “But I don’t have a—”

“Uh,” Waverly said, with a more sheepish smile. “Happy Hannukah?”

“ _Waves_ ,” Nicole said, chuckling. Waverly pointed, and she went over to the window in her living room, where the drapes had been pulled aside. A very simple, elegant metal _channukiah_ was sitting proudly on the sill, with only the lead candle sitting in its place. A box of candles sat nearby, and she put one into the rightmost cup.

“I read that it’s supposed to be displayed,” Waverly said, from the kitchen, maybe just to fill the silence. Nicole had been staring at it for a long moment, something like adoration choking her.

“Yeah,” she said, and cleared her throat. “Uh, yeah, that’s true. We didn’t, when I was a kid, but. Yeah, you’re supposed to put them where they’ll show.”

“D’you know why?” Waverly called. “Shit! Ow ow ow...”

“Please don’t burn yourself, baby. Um, but I think it’s because Hannukah’s mostly about pride,” she said, and started shuffling through drawers. “Where’d I put the matches,” she muttered.

“You _would_ say it’s about pride,” Waverly teased. Nicole snorted, plucking the box of matches from a side table drawer. Waverly paused, then added, sounding a bit puzzled, “But I thought it was about oil.”

“It is,” Nicole said, chuckling, and set the matches on the windowsill before heading back into the kitchen to lean against the counter. “But the oil is just a symbol, really. The Jews routed their enemies, fighting against an overwhelming force to reclaim the holy temple, right, and then they tried to clean it up, only to find that their enemies had desecrated the place, and they only had enough pure oil to last a night, rather than the week it would take to make more. But the oil lasted the full week anyway. It’s all about god’s approval for their efforts to take back what was theirs.”

“Didn’t know god could be so bloodthirsty.”

“That’s cuz you use the New Testament,” Nicole said with a laugh. “Trust me, Old Testament is very much about god’s approval for those fighting the good fight.”

“Huh,” Waverly said, scooping food out of pans and starting a new batch. “Kinda like us.”

Nicole considered it for a moment, and found herself smiling at the thought. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.”

“Go on and get ready for work,” Waverly said, leaning over to kiss her. “I’ve got a lot more to do here.”

 

She didn’t expect the smell of burning matches and melting candle wax to take her back twenty years.

She didn’t expect the taste of potato and applesauce to make her feel like a kid again, or to remember years of memories just by licking powdered sugar and fruit jelly off her fingers.

And she certainly didn’t expect to find peace in just sitting on her sofa with her girlfriend, watching the candles waving with their twinned reflections flickering in the glass of the window. She had a couple hours left before her shift started, and in the meantime, they curled up on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket, with Waverly’s head resting on her shoulder.

“You know,” Waverly murmured, when the candles were half-gone.

“Mm?”

“I think I like these lights better than the elaborate house displays.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Think Gus would approve?”

Waverly chuckled. “Yeah. Much more tasteful than the commercial crap.”

“Good,” Nicole said, and turned to kiss Waverly’s forehead as the flames danced and swayed, warming the room in more ways than just temperature. “Good.”

**Author's Note:**

> To those who celebrate it, merry Christmas! And a belated happy hannukah, as well. :D I hope that those of you who are spending holidays with family have a lovely time, and warm thoughts and tidings to those of you who aren't.


End file.
